Who Is/Was Your Pipe Mentor?

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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
My dad was my pipe mentor, smoking pretty much daily, most of the day, while I was growing up, owning one pipe at a time and smoking only Granger. Do you have a pipe mentor? It doesn't have to be a family member. It could be a friend, or only an acquaintance who influenced you relating to pipes. It could be a celebrity who attracted you to pipe smoking, or even someone online or a Forums member. It could even be someone you saw around your home town, whose name you didn't even know, but who smoked a pipe and encouraged you in the idea. It could be several people over your life. Who were or are your pipe mentors?

 

ashdigger

Lifer
Jul 30, 2016
11,379
70,060
60
Vegas Baby!!!
Mine was Doug of The Sanctuary in San Luis Obispo. I would not be a pipe smoker had I not gone into his shop. I had weakly, very weakly, been a pipe smoker and Doug set me in the right direction.
The other is Jason Dagner. His videos put me over the top of the pipe smoking mountain of knowledge to climb.

 

condorlover1

Lifer
Dec 22, 2013
7,996
26,614
New York
My Father and several other members of the family. It also explains my crap taste in pipes and tobacco but hey ho we can't all be super hero smokers of Falcon pipes wearing our underwear over our trousers whilst we save the world from a phone box!

 

daniel7

Part of the Furniture Now
Sep 11, 2018
560
5,811
35
Kópavogur, Iceland
Myself and and old stinky guy who sold me my first pipe at a small tobacco shop by the fish market when I was 15. Only fishermen bought chewing tobacco, snuss and pipe tobacco there. He had very cheap pipes (mainly pearwood/pear root) in his small shop and he gave me "excellent" advices. So far, I learnt almost everything by doing it. And a little bit later internet started to spread and I could reach the literature. Inspiration for pipe smoking was Conan Doyle, Tolkien, Einstein, etc. Nobody smoked a pipe in my family, only cigarettes.

 
My father smoked a pipe briefly, but I really never paid attention to him. He was more of a Winston man.

My uncles (mother's brothers) really took me under wing and taught me all the cool things, like hunting, fishing, cars, and I watched them smoke their pipes. And, then my grandfather's brothers, with their farmer ways of whittling, smoking pipes on the general store steps. After church, I was always running off with an uncle of sorts to go fishing, and they always were men of few words and pipes in the maws.
They never really set me down and showed me anything to do with pipes, but as kids do, I watched. I remember watching Uncle Leon sleeping in a folding chair on the porch with his pipe still a going for over an hour after dinner. Or, riding in a truck with Uncle Joe for two days for him to trade bird dogs, and him never speaking a word, just pipe in mouth, codger scoop, back in mouth, and over and over... and 18 hours in a truck with Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, and Donna Summer 8-tracks, three choices, that was it.
By the time I was struggling with quitting cigarettes and starting the pipe for myself, they had all passed, except one, and he had quit smoking. I never really thought of it as antiquated. I have always seen pipe smokers here. It is still not unusual for me to run into someone else smoking a pipe, we have quite a few small pipeshops here and then we have The Briary, mecca of pipe shops. Our mayor, fire marshal, and a few police officers smoke pipes. I visit daily with one old coot that smokes a pipe. I can't imagine being a pipesmoker today, isolated, feeling like the world doesn't want you. I imagine that would make me a bitter pipe guy too. If I wasn't here, where pipes and cigars are normal, I probably wouldn't smoke.

 

ray47

Lifer
Jul 10, 2015
2,451
5,610
Dalzell, South Carolina
A co-worker and I walked into a B&M just to look around and we both walked out with a pipe and some tobacco. I guess we were each others mentor. He eventually gave up the pipe, but I stuck with it. That was 52 yrs ago.

 

voorhees

Lifer
May 30, 2012
3,834
938
Gonadistan
Only one. Or at least the only guy I remember watching smoke his pipe as a child. We moved to my current town in 1974, I was 3. We had these extremely nice neighbors. They sold real estate and had a large farm. The father was a well spoken educated man. Kind of a James Garner type fella. Smoked a pipe.

He gave up smoking shortly after that. Seems his son was asthmatic and hated his smoking. I learned that recently as a matter of fact.

The image of him smoking stuck in my head, the only real person I knew who did smoke a pipe.

 

warren

Lifer
Sep 13, 2013
11,700
16,209
Foothills of the Chugach Range, AK
I had a smoke shop proprietor who would suggest blends. A couple of guys on the department smoked pipes but, we were never friends or talked pipes. I've crossed paths with other smokers in tobacco shops but, I've never had the acquaintance of another pipe smoker.

 

puffy

Lifer
Dec 24, 2010
2,511
98
North Carolina
A young fella named Chris.,He worked in a local smoke shop.He tutored me my first 3 years of pipe smoking.If not for him I probably wouldn't be a pipe smoker.Chris took a job as a meat cutter.Better pay and benefits..I haven't seen him since,but I haven't forgotten him.I often wonder about how he's doing..Well I hope.

 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,570
27,080
Carmel Valley, CA
The Dean of Students at my university. Got me in to a very good English blend, and I've tried to like others, but for now it's English and Balkans all the way for me.

 

tschiraldi

Lifer
Dec 14, 2015
1,813
3,555
55
Ohio
Dad, both grandfathers, and my Dad's good friend, Tom, who ended up with my Dad's pipes, until he past them on to me.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
In addition to my dad, my Uncle Roger smoked pipes, but in a more elaborate way than my one-pipe Granger smoking dad. I bet Uncle Roger had some upscale pipes, and I know he had a few, plus he had clay pipes, a supply, that he offered to guests. He had a mythic career in the steel industry, and a series of especially huge houses, partly for the luxury and partly for the tax break. He smoked hefty aromatics. So my dad and Uncle Roger were different kinds of pipe smokers.

 

briarblues

Can't Leave
Aug 3, 2017
379
566
mso489 -
that would be a very long list of people. Too many to try and offer as I'd surely forget to mention some.
Michael J. Glukler

 

ssjones

Moderator
Staff member
May 11, 2011
18,323
11,093
Maryland
postimg.cc
Les Young, aka "lestrout" was/is my mentor. Les has logged over 1,000 tobacco blends, with his impression notes and he has a real ability to discern flavors and nuances in a tobacco blend. I met Les at various East-Coast club meetings and events around 2010. After complaining to him about my inability to find an English (or other) blend that I really enjoyed, Les made it his personal mission to find my ideal blend. He started bringing all manner of English blends to events for me to try. During a forum meet & greet at Boswells, he introduced me to Dunhill My Mixture 965 and Bingo, I was hooked. That was around 2011? In the following years, he brought and let me try every match blend he could find, but nothing replaced the original. Well, he did introduce me to Imperial Dubec, from the now-closed Annapolis shop and we bought their remaining stock (I have about a pound left!) I certainly appreciated and benefited from his enthusiasm and persistence to find my ideal blend, so thanks Les! And, as folks have discovered throughout the US pipe-smoking scene, Les is just a great guy (and he gets to nearly every event, coast-to-coast)

 
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